The sin of assumption: motivation in adult learning

I've really been meaning to post up this presentation, done at TESOL Spain earlier this year, and finally have had a chance to run through the slides and update them slightly so that they make sense - without my voice giving instructions or explanations!


Here they are:




To scroll through the slides, use the arrow keys at the bottom of the presentation:

What do you think?

• Are textbooks too pedagogically based?
• Is it important to design materials that take in the differences between adults and children? Why?
• Do you think that children can also benefit from an "andragogical* approach"?

Do let me know what you think, and/or don't hesitate to ask questions if you have them!

Best,
Karenne

p.s. one of my teacher-trainees in a professional development course last week thought that the term shouldn't really be called andragogy because it really means "man-leading" and instead should have a term that refers more to "adult-age-learning/leading." Google and Wikipedia haven't been too helpful on finding sources for these differences however - thoughts, ideas?

• More posts on Teacher Training
• More posts on Motivation

Blogging, Chatting & Discussions Online

One of the luckiest things to ever happen in my life was being taught by Professor Hein at MLS in the US.

It was his boundless energy, creativity, positivity, dynamism and knowledge which probably most influenced me to become a teacher myself but also, it was he who inspired a love of history.  

A passion for the past. 

I am lucky to have this, I think, because unless we as a species are able to look backwards then we are unable to see forwards.

On Saturday, 17 July 2010, we held Stuttgart's first Tech Tools Day - an interactive, hands-on, full day of workshops where teacher participants were encouraged to learn more about the use of web 2.0 tools in the language learning classroom.

Expert colleagues Carl Dowse, Gavin Dudeney, Anne Hodgson, Mike Hogan, Heike Philp, Dr Petra Pointner, Byron Russell, Shelly Terrell and Andi White reviewed speaking, listening, watching, reading, describing, applying, searching, evaluating, analyzing and creating and it was a fantastic day - we all learned so much from each other.

Details of their presentations: level one here, level two here.

My own presentations were focused around the use of some of the "simpler" and depending on where you stand, possibly the less flashy of the numerous and fascinating web2.0 tools which are available today, however it was my role to look at written communication.

During the workshops, so I could provide an easy online space & exercise for our trainees to experience  threaded conversations (forums) I created a Prezi which asked "why do we write?"

Blogging, Chatting & Discussions Online on Prezi

To look at this Prezi:
click on the play button to start, continue clicking play 
or select More and set to auto-play

Many great thoughts came up and discussions ranged from whether or not we write for the interaction, to record information; to communicate with others when we aren't within hearing; to keep in touch; to share instructions; to create and collaborate.

Then, continuing on the historical theme, I made a video of our species' development of the tools we  have used to write with in the last 500 years - this  led to the qualities of instantaneous chat, asking them to think of the pedagogical applications and purposes of web2.0 tools in our classrooms.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
song by Sue Lyon Jones

I was very proud to be involved in the creation of a TechToolsDay for ELTAS partly because I enjoy sharing my knowledge, partly because I am afraid that those who are shunning technology will be left behind in ten to fifteen years as unemployable adults (or relegated to only base-level service industries) and partly because I have long felt incredibly irritated by the very, non Socratic, question "But what about the Pedagogy?"  

This, personally, to me is an incredibly foolish and fear-based question.   

The creation of the tool, the actual tool and the reason for using the tool are all different and yet all interlinked. 

A lot of teachers around the world who are resistant to today's developments will spout for you Postman - in some kind of pseudo-intellectual argument for keeping life and learning simple.   They criticize the current development of technology in the classroom as if it were something random, something that is only occurring now, in our time,  in our generation.

If we look backwards we will understand our present and see our future:

62,000 years ago we broke off branches and dipped their rough edges into the juice of berries, added chalk and colored stones to tell the perennial story of love and strife.   When charcoal paintings washed away from the walls of caves we learned how to chisel into rocks so our ideograms would not be lost.  

We fashioned clay tablets when we realized that we could not carry giant rocks, when the seasons forced us to move on to our next destinations.

We developed papyrus when we saw that clay breaks.  

When we ran out of papyrus, in a labor-intensive step, we created vellum from the hides of animals and  then finally, we made paper which 1,200 years later we're still doing because Man has an innate need to transcend his mortality, to communicate across time, to leave messages for colleagues, to share knowledge.   

When we understand this then we are able to understand that the time we are living in today is a mere blip, the so-called paradigm shift we are currently experiencing is actually nothing more than the same resource-issues we have always faced, it is no different from at any of our other junctures and it must be solved  - for today, the felling of trees is responsible for a major part of our massive environmental damage and burden.

Writing has always been done in order to reach others, to reflect and review our own experiences.

Blogs, chats, texts, tweets and our other discussions online are simply one step along this long road of evolution.   

It is nothing more than it has ever been - an attempt to harvest fleeting thoughts, to gather experiences, to warn of pain, to share joy and the experience of being a human.  

To teach.

Through our digital web2.0 tools, we are doing nothing more than painting on cave walls.

imagecredit: man of many languages, by eyesplash on flickr

Useful links related to this posting:

• Prezi: Why do we write? (adapted/downloadable as a student/teacher-training exercise)
• Animoto video: The next 500 years+
• More thoughts on technology in teaching

Best,
Karenne
education

Dogme ELT 2.0

Making the simple complex
or
Making the complex simple?

This post is part of a teacher-training workshop on using the web2.0 platform, Ning, with adult language learners, I'm Ningin' it, and also is a comment on the comments on Nick Jaworski's Crazy or Enlightened.

• KS on Dogme 
• Wikipedia on Dogme ELT
• Communicative Language Teaching
• Task Based Learning
• Bloom's Taxonomy
• Web2.0
• Dogme3D / Virtual Worlds Language Learning

Best,
Karenne

2 more IATEFL scholarships!

Dear Latin American Readers,

You might be in luck... IATEFL have one more scholarship available, check the link(s) below and apply ASAP!

The award consists of:

• conference registration
• £1800 towards accommodation, expenses and travel costs
• a year's IATEFL membership if applicable

To qualify you must:

• be a native of and resident in a Latin American country
• be a practising teacher or teacher trainer in primary, secondary or tertiary education
• agree to write a 500 word report of your conference experiences by June 2010
• not have attended an IATEFL annual conference before

Deadline: 1st March 2010
http://www.iatefl.org/scholarships/latin-american-scholarship

and...

The Consultants-E have another scholarship for teachers (anywhere in the world*) unable to attend the annual conference in person but who participate actively in the online conference Moodle by making relevant and thoughtful postings.

You do not have to be a member of IATEFL for this scholarship.

The award consists of:

• a fully funded 2 week online course to be selected from the course list at http://www.theconsultants-e.com covering Blogs, Wikis, eNetworks or Podcasting

To qualify you must:

• live and work in a developing country
• have 5-6 hours per week available to study for the duration of the course
• have a reliable Internet connection for the duration of the course
• be able to undertake the course within one year of winning the award

Deadline: 25th April 2010.
http://www.iatefl.org/scholarships/the-consultants-e-online-iatefl-scholarship

Best,
Karenne

Marisa Constantinides on How to Become an ELT Teacher Educator

Oh, To be a Teacher Trainer!

In the relatively recent past, Cambridge ESOL redefined their policies regarding the hiring of Course Tutors for CELTA, DELTA and other Cambridge Teaching Awards courses stating an absolute minimum qualification:

Today, it is almost impossible to be approved as a tutor on any of these courses if one does not have a Cambridge DELTA Diploma.

Although not necessary to have attended a trainer training course or to have a Masters in TEFL/TESOL or Applied Linguistics in order to be employed in one of these courses, Cambridge ESOL requires prospective CELTA and DELTA tutors to go through an extensive induction period, supervised by an Authorised Teaching Awards Centre involving:

• putting together a portfolio of trainer training tasks, documents and materials
• observing/following one or more courses at an accredited centre
• being observed by one's supervisor (usually to Course Tutor)
• being assessed for their portfolio work and trainer skills by a specially appointed external Cambridge Assessor.

I consider this is a very positive development, although it does create issues for very experienced (and often highly sought after!) teacher educators who find themselves interested in becoming approved CELTA and DELTA approved tutors at this particular juncture.

Still, although the system may have its drawbacks for a small number of exceptions, as a rule it forms a very good code of practice for the profession. And I believe that Cambridge ESOL are, in a way, attempting to declare the profession's coming of age.

A HISTORY OF THE PAST – TEACHER TRAINER OR TEACHER EDUCATOR?

I have been a teacher trainer for many years, more years, in fact than I have been a teacher educator. My career as a teacher trainer began when I was literally pulled out of the classroom by a highly perceptive Academic Director who saw some potential in me and who threw me into teacher training head first!

By that time, I had already attended a Certificate level course, obtained my Diploma in TEFLA (then known as the RSA DTEFLA, equivalent of today’s Cambridge DELTA) and had five years' classroom teaching experience with both young learners and adults.

But other than that, I had no other training on how to train TEFL teachers; later, I gained more experience when certain British publishers offered me the opportunity to do freelance teacher training for them. Through this training, I got my second major lucky break – I was offered a job as an in-house teacher trainer for a major language school in Athens (now also a major publisher as well) and started training the staff at that school through pre-sessional/start of the year courses and through continuous development workshops and seminars throughout the year.

I learnt an enormous amount through this job, a lot of it about teacher training and a lot about the administration of introducing innovation and change into a language institution.

After I had been a teacher trainer for some time, I felt I needed more background and that was the time I decided to follow an M.A. in Applied Linguistics, a course I completed at the University of Reading and which I still use to its fullest!

On that M.A., I followed a Teacher Education option, which was really the first formal training I received on syllabus design for teacher education courses, different coding systems and ways of giving feedback, analysing classroom discourse, teacher assessment schemes, and many more relevant topics.

It is at that point that I realised the difference between a teacher trainer and a teacher educator, a term which if not introduced by H.G.Widdowson, was certainly inspired by an important article published in ELTJ in 1984 , in which he says that “teachers need to be trained in practical techniques, but must also be educated to see those techniques as exemplars of certain theoretical principles..” otherwise they cannot derive expertise from experience, and later calls for teachers who “are not consumers of research, but researchers in their own right. It is this, I think, that makes teaching a professional activity, and which should, therefore, provide incentive to those who claim membership of the profession.”

My career as a teacher educator – in Widdowson’s sense then, changed and became more charged with a focus on teacher education for reasons to do with a new perception of what training and educating classroom teachers involves since I completed my MA studies.

My personal training style evolved many times over throughout the years up to now, mainly through focussed observation of experienced tutors/presenters at conferences and workshops.

Personal favourites include Rod Bolitho, Tony Wright and Ken Wilson but watching my colleagues has also given me inspiration - current CELTA co-tutor Olha Madylus is one of the most inspiring and motivating teacher educators I have ever seen; as are Tony Whooley and George Vassilakis, great CELTA & DELTA co-tutors, to name only a few.

CURRENT PRACTICES & CHOICES

These days there are numerous Trainer Training courses available to anyone interested in teacher education. To name a few, Marjon's (The University College of St Mark & St John in Plymouth) runs a very good one; Warwick University has an MA in TEFL, specializing in teacher education.

To anyone who asks today what they should do in order to go into the field of teacher education, I always suggest following one of these courses.

You can, of course, learn on the job, but it's the same as teaching.

You do acquire some skills through practice or by being mentored by good teacher educators, but the shortcut to faster development is by following a good course and it is well worth the effort and cost.

Without one, you may eventually get to your destination but it will take you a much longer time to achieve what you can learn in a much shorter time.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A TEACHER TRAINER/EDUCATOR?

The Council of Europe stipulates that those involved in the training of professionals should have received a minimum of 400 hours of training themselves, which is a good point to think about, not just regarding teacher educators.

Apart from evidence of extensive training (ideally including a DELTA and an M.A. in TEFL or Applied Linguistics), here are some of the qualities I look for in anyone who wants to work as a teacher trainer/educator at my training institution.

I look for educators who...

• have extensive and varied classroom teaching experience
• are experienced and highly skilled in lesson & materials design
• are familiar with a wide range of materials available, published in print form and online
• have extensive experience of training and supporting adult learners
• have experience of having been observed by others themselves
• are able to deliver lessons using a wide range of presentation/teaching modes
• are highly polished classroom practitioners/master teachers themselves
• are confident and supportive individuals
• have an interest in their own ongoing professional development/ new technologies do not frighten them and they are keen to develop and learn
• have thorough understanding of the theoretical assumptions underpinning classroom techniques/ lessons/ materials/lesson shapes, etc.
• are highly proficient in the language of instruction (English) with outstanding language awareness
• have observed other teachers extensively and seen different ways of giving feedback to trainee teachers
• are mature, balanced, objective and have a reflective approach to teaching and teacher education
• are in full control of their teaching style and classroom persona
• are keen learners and sharers and are generous about sharing what they know with other colleagues

I could add many more qualities I look for, such as a bright and sunny disposition, a good sense of humour, tolerance and patience, sensitivity, efficiency, passion for teaching – a great ingredient!!! - professionalism, promptness, punctuality, flexibility, empathy....the list could go on and on.

But what I want to stress is that my ideal candidate will have both the high polish of a good teacher trainer as well as the depth of understanding of a good teacher educator.


CAN EVERY GOOD TEACHER BECOME A TEACHER TRAINER/EDUCATOR?

Many of you may have noticed that many of the qualities mentioned in the previous section are also highly desirable qualities in a teacher!

So, can a good teacher become a good teacher trainer/educator?

This is a key question, and I am afraid that my own personal response is “No, I do not think so”. Not all very good, or even outstanding classroom teachers are suitable for a career in teacher training.

There is one major (in my own view always) attribute which is absolutely necessary, the ability to analyse the teaching process and classroom practices for the benefit of one's trainees.

Without this very special ability, while it may not be difficult to pick up a published or unpublished set of training materials and deliver sessions to a group of trainees, it can be very difficult to support the same trainees in lesson preparation, suggest alternatives, advise them or tailor one's instruction to suit different needs, different teaching and learning contexts as well as the developing/emerging needs of one's own trainees!

To my trainees who ask me how it is possible to develop into a good teacher educator, I say the same things. This is not just the next logical step in every TEFL teacher’s career and it cannot be done well by everyone but there is no doubt that there is, indeed, a great need for more people in this profession!

Teacher training/education is a serious business requiring specialist knowledge, a passion for teaching and helping people, personal commitment, the classroom polish of a master teacher and a willingness to learn and share the learning with others.

It should be serious but also greatly motivating and great fun – when appropriate.

So to balance out my very serious post, I've included a couple of photographs from training sessions which were wonderfully inspiring and great fun for trainees and their tutor! Do you have any questions?

About the Author
Marisa Constantinides is the DOS of CELT Athens, a teacher education centre in Athens which offers TEFL, Cambridge CELTA and DELTA courses to teachers from all over the world.





You can reach her via:

• School Website
• Blog in English
• Blog in Greek
• Twitter
• Facebook

Business English Teachers Conference - Poland, Nov 20-22nd 2009

For the first time ever, the annual BESIG conference will be held outside central Europe and instead will take place in one of Poland's biggest cities - Poznan.



Every year the IATEFL Business English SIG conference draws between 350 and 550 participants, bringing together teachers, publishers, innovators, school representatives and it is a unique forum for anyone working in the field of business English teaching.

This year the plenary will be given by my favorite business course book author, Vicki Hollett, and she'll be talking to us about relationships and the effect interpersonal language has in the workplace.

Other great presentations include:

Anişoara Pop from Romania presenting asynchronous speaking and writing web 2.0 tools, Nick Robinson designing needs and means analysis in Financial English, Rita Baker spelling and Chia Suan Chong on an alternative to ELF.

Heike Philp, Graham Stanley and Holly Longstroth will be discussing business English in 2ndLife; Christiana Gardikioti will talk about how to make effective powerpoint presentations and Matt Firth will review the Legal English Certificate.

James Schofield will be informing us why Business students should read graded readers - but by the way, I need no convincing on that, my students LOVE his books - some have even written reviews...

David Cotton on authentic business videos, Duncan Baker chatting with you on finding business clients, Paul Emmerson (is this his first live workshop since he became a daddy? ;-)), will be highlighting his book, Business Vocabulary Builder; Anne Hodgson on monitoring and motivating our 1:1 students and also Tonya Trapp reviewing generation Y in business English.

And many, many, many, more fascinating presentations.


For more information about these, full workshop details etc, see the website:

BESIG conference 2009

Early bird registration (by Sept 30) - €120, €95 IATEFL members.

Best,
Karenne

p.s to watch a video from last years' conference, see this posting here.

Need mentoring on being a better English Language Teacher?

Alex Case of the TEFLtastic blog has just set up a mentoring experiment / forum on the TEFL.net website.

Go check it out and sign up if you're a EFL/ESL teacher looking for some help or a teacher trainer looking for a way to help out the noobs.

And, of course, anytime you've got a question on

• teaching speaking
• student-centered teaching
• teaching IT or financial students
• using technological tools

don't hesitate to email me - I might not always have the answers, but I might know someone who does!

Best,
Karenne

What can your Business English students teach you?

I have another great secret.

My students are incredible people.

They are bankers, managers, managing bankers; they are CEOs and CFOs, web programmers and designers; they are parents, they are wives and husbands, they belong to groups and associations - they work in the Energy sector, the Automobile industry, in Finance and Marketing.

They're champions.


They have hobbies. They have dreams, ambitions. They've failed at stuff, won awards and prizes, done a lot with their lives. They certainly know a heck of a lot more about business plans and web design than I ever will.


So you know what I do?

I listen and learn.

Sometimes they're so passionate about all the things they can teach me how to do, that while they're sharing their immeasurable knowledge, they completely forget they're speaking in English. Sometimes, I feel like I'm floundering in a sea of vocabulary that I'm sort of, kind of aware of but don't really know what it really means (the investment bankers).

I get them to teach the stuff they do in their normal lives as if I were one of their pupils.

I concentrate on the structure of the sentences while they do this, correcting their mistakes subtly, simply as a part of the conversation and encourage them to pay attention, to self-correct and auto-correct each other.

And all the while they are becoming completely themselves in my language.


Are your students special people too?

Who are they? What knowledge have they got, what do they really know heaps about that they 'd enjoy teaching you? Are you willing to let them be the bosses?

What is something you're interested in learning about? Or better yet, what is something you never ever thought you'd be interested in knowing more about? Are you sure? You've got some free schooling up ahead of you if you want it.

I must warn you, though, this exercise comes with a warning: your life, hobbies and interests could seriously change beyond repair.

Best,
Karenne
p.s By any chance did you already do this? Tell us what you learned about!

Teacher Training: Making Business English Textbooks Interesting

Last week I had a lovely time working with a group of English language teachers who came to the VHS in Ludwigsburg for a workshop entitled

Pepping Up Your Business English Course Book!

Our objectives included looking at different ways to increase student-centered learning in our EFL and ESP classrooms and on making lessons exciting even when the teacher is required to use a published material in their curriculum.

The slides from my presentation are at the bottom of this posting. If you were there, you can use these to refresh your memory of some of the points we went through during our workshop and if you weren't, as you’re an EFL teacher too, you’re welcome to have a look and learn with us.

Do feel free to ask or answer questions!

We Asked the Question: Why Do Textbooks Need Supplementing?

You suggested things like they aren’t timely, they aren’t topical, sometimes they’re years and years out-of-date.



The books are sometimes very dull. Too much reading or too little reading. The role plays aren’t authentic or interesting.

The subjects don’t have anything to do with our students actual lives, professions or responsibilities. They’re generic – one size fits all. Sometimes a bit patronizing.

Vocabulary presented often isn’t the vocabulary our students are looking for. There’s very little review of vocabulary from unit to unit.

Not enough speaking activities.

What do you think?

Do you agree with our conclusions?

Then We Did a Study Of Multiple Intelligence:

And looked at images of

• JK Rowlings
• Stephen Hawking
• Columbus
• David Beckham
• Ray Charles
• Prince Charles
• Barack Obama
• Goethe
• Dalai Lama.

In what ways are they all intelligent people?

We marveled at David Beckham’s enormous ability to not only get a ball to curve but that he is able to understand his body so well to make it move where he needs it to, his intelligence understanding the size and distance of a football field: intelligences none of us in the room could say we possess!

Have a look at the names on the list, who is intrapersonally intelligent?

Which ones are interpersonally, spiritually, musically, spatially, mathematically, verbally, naturalistically intelligent?

Do you think that intelligences overlap? Is there a 10th intelligence? What might that might be?

Hint: All 9 of the above examples probably have it – Prince Charles might be the debatable one…although given his recent talks on climate change – hmm, he fits too!* answer at the bottom.

What about the learning styles?

What role might this play in our classrooms?

We discussed what we would have to do if we were the English teachers of Beethoven, Miles Davies or Louis Armstrong and had to teach them Business English!

Next We Reviewed the Practices Of Teaching Business People Business Skills In English:

What are we teaching our students? Don’t they know more about Business than we do? Shouldn’t we be focusing in on their knowledge, simply giving them the language to perform as well as they normally do?

What is it that they want to learn? How are we teaching this to them?

Are we paying enough attention to who our learners really are?

After That We Analyzed Supplementary Materials:

What is available from the Publishers, from ELT websites – which would we use, why these?

What are the intrinsic strengths in each exercise, what weaknesses lie therein; any opportunities? Are there any changes you’d make to the material, why?

Are they all feasible - with which kind of groups – what learners are they aimed at?

Who wouldn’t they work with?

Do the activities support the course book?

Karenne recommends these books, here

plus these websites:

• http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html
• http://www.business-spotlight.de/
• http://www.handoutsonline.com/navigation/collections/business.htm
• http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/pdf/index.pl
• http://www.teachit.co.uk/

Later On We Discussed Using Authentic Materials and Internet “Realia” in the English Language Classroom

Why? So we watched this video:

We Then Looked Into Creating Materials and Using Authentic Materials from the Internet with English Language Students:

For lesson tips using new media & technology, see here.

Recommended blogs/sites by teachers who provide excellent tips and know-how (click to go to their pages):

• Nadia Nassif (Business English skills)http://www.springboardsltc.com/blog
• Sirin Soyoz (quick tech-tips) http://www.24minutesenglishaday.blogspot.com/
• Jamie Keddie (youtube) http://jamiekeddie.com
• Claudio Azevedo (movies) http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com
• Lindsay Clandfield (methodology, lists & more) http://sixthings.net
• Eric Roth (conversation know-how) http://www.compellingconversations.com/blog
• Johanna Stirling (spelling) http://thespellingblog.blogspot.com
• Nicholas Whitley (grammar tips and full lesson plans) http://strictly4myteacherz.wordpress.com/
• Neal Chambers (grammar and more) http://www.englishspark.com
• Alex Case (news & comments on the TEFL industry) http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/

We Were Also In Awe Of Ronaldo Lima’s Very Impressive Class (who are blogging):

What happens when students choose to write articles and then see themselves published for the world to see?

Pop over there for a visit, http://finally5b.blogspot.com/ ask or get your students to ask his students how they do it & do let them know what you think!

Then I Showed Everyone The Products I Make Myself:

SimplyConversationsTM and SimplyQuestsTM:

What is the target group of SimplyConversations? What type of learners, what kind of intelligence?

Why are they fun to use? What sorts of skills do they activate?

How do students feel about doing 1.5hrs of strictly conversation?

What effect does choosing their own tasks in the SimplyQuests have when they’re doing their post-task activity (a.k.a homework)?

And Finally We Made An Action Plan For Future Lessons

What will you be doing to pep up your Business English courses?

Don’t hesitate to continue the communication with me by clicking on comments (at end of posting).

Thank you for coming Sibylle, Christine, Birgit, Wilfriede, Irmgard, Sandra, Jim, Stormy, Ines, Eva, Elizabeth, Veronique, Helmut and Maulina! Thanks VHS Ludwigsburg for organizing the event and hosting us. Am looking forward to continuing learning, growing and sharing with you.

Karenne

Recommended Reading:

• The Role of Pride in the Language Classroom
• Do you know who your learners are?
• Personally Speaking
• Where's the love y'all

Tech stuff:

• Uncommonly creative
• Using slideshare for teaching Business English
• Start using technology in your classroom
• Hit the Business Blogs for Authentic Materials!

*The 10th intelligence proposed above is visionary: the person who is not only able to 'see' into the future but knows what to do with the way things are changing. Of course, this intelligence is hotly debated as to whether it is an intelligence, as is spiritual and naturalistic intelligence.

There are others too, of course. Read more about multiple intelligences here (lots of links).


The Presentation Slides:

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Spre esl TEFL

Slide over to slideshare.net, EFL Tech-Tip -4

If you've been reading my blog postings for a while now then you'll already know that I'm a big fan of slideshare and even have my own page there.

If not, then let me quickly introduce you to a super source of material for your business, general English and ESP classes; teacher-training tips; grammatical explanations and much, much, more.

Slideshare is basically a platform where trainers, normal people and experienced consultants load up their powerpoint or open office presentations so that anyone who might be interested in learning from them can.

It's a wonderful source of authentic material, mostly highly professional and very informative.

The best of these are written with very few words, many images and thus work as excellent skills prompters.

You can use them as a basis to get your students chatting, writing, dissecting the issues in context or extracting core vocabulary. Get them making predictions, explaining backgrounds behind the ideas, comparing cultural influences or just simply learning English by learning something they're very interested in knowing more about.

Downloading from this site is a simple procedure: above each presentation which allows this function, there's a button you can use to do this. Look for the little pink heart which marks favorites - next to that there's a button with a down arrow indicating you can take the presentation and store it on your own computer.

And of course, if you don't have access to a computer in your classroom, you can also set the slideshares as a pre- or post-task activity (a.k.a homework) by sending your students the link(s) via email. Best, of course, is getting them to slide on over to make their own choices.

Useful links related to this posting:

Lesson tips using slideshare

Stuff I've used with my students, stuff I learned from, stuff I save here.
(see left side for tag types)

Best,
Karenne

p.s. If you've got any other great tips to share with us on how to use slideshares in the ESL & EFL classroom or if you'd like to tell us how you used one of them with your students, don't hesitate to do so - we can all learn together - click on comments.

Update 25-March-2008 for the smartphone/blackberry and i-phone users:
Slideshare available on your mobile phones (as far as I can tell, still free)

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Cardiff Online - EFL Conference Goes Virtual

Cardiff says hello to the world:

Biggest global teaching event ever!

On April 1st, 2009, over 1600 teachers and academics from around the world will descend on Cardiff for the annual conference of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL).

The conference boasts an international line up of world-class plenary speakers;

• Marc Prensky (from USA),
• Elana Shohamy (from Israel),
• Bonny Norton (from Canada),
• Fauzia Shamim (from Pakistan),
• Claudia Ferredas (from Argentina).

There will be over 400 talks, workshops, symposia and the event offers a state of the art exhibition of teaching materials, as well as a rich social program with a distinctly Welsh flavour. This year, 93 different countries will be represented at the event, making it a truly international occasion.

Delegates hail from as far as Vietnam, Venezuela, Cameroon and Micronesia.

However there are many thousands of professionals for whom attending the conference is usually no more than a dream because of the costs involved in travel to UK.

Therefore this year the event is being made accessible to thousands more participants from all around the globe through a virtual community space, known as ‘Cardiff on-line.’ This exciting and ground-breaking innovation is possible due to a collaboration between IATEFL and The British Council and is in line with their aim to link and support English language professionals worldwide.

The event, April 1 - April 4th 2009, is expected to be one of the biggest global teacher development events ever.

A large team will be in place behind the scenes to bring the workshops and speeches to remote audiences. Any teacher, anywhere in the world, from Mongolia, Nepal or Ethiopia to Germany, the USA and Japan will be able to sign up and participate for free in the conference from their own country.

All they'll need is good internet access, a computer and preferably a headset. All the plenary talks, as well as a sizable number of other presentations will be shown live over the Net, recorded and also made available on the conference site for later viewing.

There are also numerous forums discussing all aspects of the EFL profession, (already very active and engaging) photo albums, chat sessions and prizes!

See you there,
Best,
Karenne

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Useful links related to this posting:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2009

Poster for your staffroom:
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/2009/webgraphics/staffroom-poster.pdf

This text is an adaptation of the IATEFL Press release (March 09) , used with permission.

The Role of Pride in the Business English Classroom

At the British School in Tumbaco, I once had the brief and unfortunate experience of working for an arrogant pig (no longer employed there and no other word could describe this person) who thought that the Ecuadorian students and their parents were all stupid because they couldn’t speak to him in fluent English.

I remember very clearly his nose stuck about 100 meters in the air as he decried the entire Quiteño population devoid of intelligence while he himself, of course, could barely manage the words Cerveza or Baño.  Idiots aside, one of the things stopping communication from emerging in your adult language classrooms is fear.

Not just the fear of speaking but the fear of sounding stupid.

When teaching adults there is an extra, realistic, element: their fear of being judged as being inferior simply because they don’t know the right words nor how to use them appropriately.

So, today’s posting, part 3 on the art of teaching conversation is all about PRIDE.

As it’s probably this issue that accounts for the majority of students who end up quitting their lessons. Do you agree?

We've all got ego and those at the top have even more. I'm willing to bet you've all heard the following from your learners:

“I sounds unprofessional when I answer the phone. I speak not good so if no one help me, I put down the phone.” Croatian secretarial student.

“Sometimes my brain goes dead. The words I know go away completely and I suddenly don’t know what to say. When I remember it is too late, they are discussing something else.

I feel angry when this happens because in my language I can control the conversation, in English the people I am talking to control me.” German Business executive.

“Words are my life, my work. When I cannot use words I am not me.” Ecuadorian journalist.

Put yourself in their shoes!

Can you imagine what it must feel like to suddenly become that inadequate? 

Earlier that day they perhaps closed a €1.5million deal, are the kings and queens of their worlds yet when they swaggered into your English class they were suddenly unable to construct a simple sentence.

Pay special attention to your students’ lives, their prides about their lives and professions.

Think a little about the non-physical environment you create in the classroom and make efforts to keep it a safe, non-judgmental place: one where it is okay to try new challenges, make errors, be again five year old children or thirteen year old know-it-all-dummies. 

Your role as their English teacher is to nurture, to coach them, to give them the tools which will allow them to express themselves

as themselves

within a foreign language.

One of the things I often do, especially with my captains of Industry is reminding them that I wouldn’t have a job if they were already perfect in English.   No job, no money, no life. We laugh when I say “Come on, please make lots of mistakes so that I can buy more chocolate/ pay my rent/ go on holiday!”

Do you have any useful tricks up your sleeve - things you do or say to make sure your students are comfortable with their errors?

Think about what else you can do to help your students keep their egos intact while extracting and encouraging their English conversational abilities.

Do you praise them often? How?

Are you, yourself, busy learning something new so that you can remind yourself often about what it feels like to be the ‘idiot’ in the room?

Don’t hesitate to let us know your own tips and strategies for managing pride in the adult Business English classroom

To read part one: knowing who your learners are, come here.

To read part two: finding out what your students are interested in discussing, come here.

Conversation materials and activities: www.kalinago-english.com

Sights & Sounds: BESIG conference 2008

A quick scan of my micro-sized office will reveal the remnants of a business English conference: brochures and catalogs on the floor, my ticket stubs tucked beneath the scanner, business cards propped up by a six-day old coffee cup -but drat, where's the American guy's card, what was his name again?

Is it in my purse? Hmmm...

Oh and of course, my ultra handy netbook is resting precariously on top of my filing tray - the mini computer looks like a cute toy even though it's actually more powerful than my laptop - he's (his full name is The Little Blue Guy and we're in love) just FULL of draft versions on the different sessions I attended at BESIG.

Ya, my work's cut out for me!

I'll be posting reports of these sessions up bit by bit, in between other lesson tips, ideas and reflections on teaching business and ESP English but in the meantime thought I'd quickly share some of the videos and photos I shot during the conference: made a little compilation which I hope you'll enjoy:

BESIG 2008- video by Karenne Sylvester is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. You have my full permission to download a copy or embed it into your own blog/website. To do so, go here. To learn more about creative commons, come here.

The BESIG organizers organized a very, very efficient event.

As soon as one entered the door, it was clear what to do, where to go and how. Coffee abounded, there was lots of space and most of the presenters were highly professional, prepared and interesting with much knowledge to pass on.

My feedback would include:

To the BESIG coordinators:

Timing - 40 minute sessions are too short.

Most of the presenters could not stay within the time frame, understandably. My personal recommendation would be to provide one hour sessions instead, asking trainers to present for 45 and leave 15mins room for questions and discussion.

Trainers:

Know your audience.

While the great majority of the sessions I attended were fantastic and I'll report on those, some weren't. Some were an utter waste of time.

The main problem seemed to lie in the fact that the trainer didn't know who he/she was presenting to.

Sometimes I felt like I was in someone's very tiny personal institute rather than at an important BE conference - sort of like being with a bunch of unqualified trainers who were being taught the first round of basics or being given information best saved for an in-company group meeting.

However, the reality is that in most sessions I was surrounded by at least one or two

• Authors

• Directors of Studies or Assistant Directors of Studies

• Entrepreneurs and freelancers

• Teacher-trainers
  

and in all the sessions:

seriously committed BE teachers.

It costs time, money and energy to make it to a conference - we're not on holiday, so

1) be prepared
2) involve your audience
3) finish your research before presenting it - we're not interested in what if
4) spend a little time with powerpoint* and get to know it, it can be your friend
*obviously it's not always necessary to use new media, when it's not used the presentation should still be commanding.
5) practice your presentation


Publishers' Panel:

This needs to be a double session (or at least 1.5hrs).

There was only time for 2, max 3 questions(?). The room was jam-packed: we had stuff to hear and stuff to discuss, we are your community: your purchasers, your reviewers, your critics - there wasn't enough time to do this in.

That said, great stuff the rest of you:

John Allison, aside from your fantastic materials, you're a clear and dynamic presenter and I am actually going to cave in and buy yet another Business English coursebook, if you're involved in The Business, I'll check it out. Emery, I may never ever fly again but I will pass on your details if I meet teachers who want to specialize in aviation English. Schofield, my students are currently reading/listening to your readers, enjoying them so far and I've asked them to write up the reviews themselves! We'll post the results up soon. Prof. Azennoud I really enjoyed learning about Morocco - it snows in Morocco!!!- and your developments there, thanks for coming to Germany to share.

Useful links related to the video:
BESIG

New Business English teaching certificate
Skylight, CTLC-C
Training in Aviation English for teachers and learners
Emery-Roberts

Macmillan Education
Aviation English Student's Book and DVD Pack
Business Upper-intermediate: Student's Book DVD ROM Pack

Langescheidt readers by James Schofield
Room Service (Summertown Readers)
Peril in Venice (Summertown Readers)
Summertown Readers: Ekaterina

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge English for...series
Cambridge English for Job-Hunting Student's Book with Audio CDs (2) with CD (Audio) (Cambridge English for)

Best,
Karenne

Teacher, Teacher, please fix my grammar

As I strolled into the Haus der Wirtschaft I was immediately struck by two things: the gorgeous setting amidst statues and art pieces and the sheer quantity of English language teachers milling around.

Lindsay Clandfield: materials writer, author of the Macmillan Straightforward series, web contributor for OneStopEnglish, columnist for the Guardian Weekly, highly commended for the Duke of Edinburgh award was in the Haus, and man, us teachers were looking forward to a great training session.

Oh and I've a confession to make! Around three years ago when Macmillan asked me if I wouldn't mind being observed teaching by Lindsay and his editor, I had zero idea of who he was and said yes with barely a blink. Nowadays, knowing all he's done in his life, for teachers and the world of ELT, I'd be way too intimidated to do that again. Ha! Ignorance is bliss, eh?

It was a gorgeous German Friday afternoon in November. Lindsay, on tour with Hueber and Macmillan, was here in Stuttgart doing a workshop on how to make great grammar explanations.

Time to polish up those old rags and tune up the tools, guys!

He started off his intro' by telling us that good grammar teachers:

• explain things clearly
• make explanations memorable
• are economic

There are different schools of thought on achieving this:

• teacher-centered teaching (lecturing)
• student-centered training (coaching)

You often see these reflected in textbooks along with these learning methods:

• inductive - students get given the examples then work out the rules themselves
• deductive -students get given the rules then apply them to examples

Which is best?

Well that depends on you: your teaching style, your philosophy, your students' learning styles and their needs. Sometimes, when it comes down to teaching grammar, inductive student-centered training is simply not economic.

Sometimes one, or the other, leads to frustrations for the learner and obviously, the teacher. Change tact when and where necessary.

Lindsay then opened up his toolbox and brought out:

The hammer

• don't start with grammar

• prepare

• be brief

• break your explanation down into stages and steps

• give tangible examples: sentences clearly related to your students' lives, the context of the classroom - something, anything that your students can understand and practice using
  

• use humor and imagination
  

• provide mnemonic devices

e.g. we use since to say /the day/ when it started

Diagrams and board work

Lindsay headed over to the flip-chart and sketched a line which he then broke up with slashes at the bottom, top and middle then called out "What's this?"

With barely a pause we yelled out "adverbs of frequency."

Did you do it too? We're such ELT geeks, aren't we!

After that we pooled our different symbols, signs and the sketchings we often use with our students. Given the setting, it wasn't really that surprising to find out there were a number of artists present.

Analyzing text

Lindsay discussed the use of written texts (authentic or not) - that's when you find a news article, a speech or a passage from literature and get students to do the work, to find examples of a specific structure and:

• underline
• circle
• speculate why the author may have used that particular wording (e.g. modals)

or encourage them to use a text to look out for:

• phrasal verbs
• gerunds and infinitives
• collocations

or perhaps to ask them to:

• find examples, circle then underline the word which is being referred to (e.g. the, it)
• find examples and change them (e.g quantifiers or a tense: make a past, present)

Life stories

One of the highlights of the afternoon came when Lindsay told us all a very personal family story entitled:

How Clanfield became Clandfield
or how our family name was changed

We were engrossed as the story of his great-great-great grandfather's arrogance lost his ancestors an inheritance and how a man's pride can lead to an alternative legacy.

If Papa Clanfield hadn't tossed a ball of rags into a lake, we might never have had the opportunity to see great-great-grandson Clandfield in action - he'd be sitting in a posh manor instead.

It was highly entertaining, we had a good giggle at his expense but it was also serious grammar teaching - the story he used reviews gradeable and non-gradeable adjectives.

Do you have a story?

I just bet you do - I've got a list of them: 3rd conditional spills the beans on a man I once loved and lost to monsoon rains and oh, what could have been if I hadn't slipped; past perfect tells the day I met an orangutan in the jungles of Borneo and the events that had happened before this chance meeting; can&can't will reveal the sordid details of how I conned my way into a job on a yacht despite not being able to sail at the time; futures will invite you into my daydreams of one day becoming a famous film scriptwriter. Ah...

What are your stories and how do you use them in your classrooms?

Generative situations

After that, Lindsay moved on over to the whiteboard, took out a black marker and began sketching again.

He called out "What's this?"

We looked, a man, a face? "A man" we cried tentatively.

"Where is he?"

"In HOSPITAL"

"What's wrong?"

"He has a broken...." Lindsay drew the cast. "leg."

Then he drew another circle.

"Who's this?"

"A woman."

Lindsay laughed and filled in her hair and eyelashes.

"What's her name, what's their relationship?"

And so it continued, Lindsay eliciting, getting us to supply the setting for a story, until:

"The window's closed but the man is hot, what does he say?"

"Could you open the window please?"

"The man is thirsty, what does he say?"

"Would you mind pouring me a glass of water?"


This simple concept, the idea of eliciting requests and offers can be adapted and changed by teachers simply drawing out pictures while prompting for grammar:

• a memorable holiday (practice adjectives, past simple)
• a sales representative and customer (present simple, conditionals)
• planning a long trip (futures, reason clauses)

Of course one thing to note is that when explaining grammar, it can take up vital communicative, speaking-in-the-classroom time, so think carefully about how often you want to use these methods and focus on the ones that encourage the most response.

At the beginning of this posting I mentioned that there are three important steps to being a great grammar teacher:

• explain things clearly
• make explanations memorable
• be economic

We haven't really talked about the economic part yet.



Translation

Straight translation is, as Lindsay said and I agree, the most economic method of all.

I confess to not doing much of this myself - English only classroom rules and all of that - however I do allow it as part of a post-task activity (my word for homework).

Basically my thoughts are, if the students have a very low level of English it takes up an extraordinary amount of in-the-class learning time to explain something and with some aspects of grammar perhaps a quick overview in their own language might be more effective.

If a structure is totally new, it should be presented most thoroughly in the maximum of methods and styles to ensure saturation of knowledge. The entire toolbox should be used. Being amusing, being personal, making it relevant.

With higher level groups my philosophy is that it is also important to go backwards, tune the machine, fix those rusty screws and set students back on track, wrenching them away from bad habits - the more entertaining the more likely it is that it'll stick - your explanation will serve as a bridge to what was actually taught.

Of course when there's one student in a group, with one particular area of stubborn weakness, the most economic path in my opinion, is sending him a quick link to Grammar 330 with the instructions of practice-practice-practice.

What do you usually do?
How do you feel about this issue?

And finally, I'll leave you with huge BREAKING NEWS:

Lindsay will be launching his own blog next year:

it'll be reflections and thoughts
you and the countries he visits,
the teachers, the materials,
the road
and...

sssh - mustn't tell you too much, yet!

Many, many thanks go to Hueber for bringing such a dynamic professional over to train us here in Stuttgart, for free: you rock!

Best,
Karenne